Microsoft

My electric company, Potomac Electric Power Co., has announced a joint venture with RCN Corp. of Princeton, N.J., to offer local and long-distance telephone service to callers in Washington, D.C., and nearby areas, plus cable television and high-speed connections to the Internet. With stockholder money, PEPCO would compete head-on against Bell Atlantic, which won approval from the Federal Communications Commission on Aug. 14 for its $25-billion merger with NYNEX.

Reporting the story, The Washington Post quoted PEPCO President John M.

Did you see Enron's new TV ad when it aired last month during the Super Bowl? What a dud. I had heard about Enron's big pitch (em in fact, I was watching carefully for the ad when, early during the first quarter, here comes this scene of an electric utility power plant control room with a hamster running in place on a wheel inside a cage, trying to reach a bottle of beer standing on a pedestal a few inches away.

Whoa now! Can this be true?

Flexible prices make markets hum,

but discounts discriminate when monopolies rule.

Many expect that the electricity industry is moving inexorably toward a much-publicized "new competitive era." Companies, regulatory officials and experts all regard the momentum as powerful.

So far, the changes are just beginning, and there is a long way to go to reach fully effective competition. %n1%n Yet even at this early stage, the merger and pricing strategies adopted by the established electric firms may be threatening the prospects for competition.

techniques may imply trade-offs in service

quality.By Scott L. Englander, John E. Flory,

Leslie K. Norford, and Richard D. TaborsAs facility manager for a large hotel, you browse your energy vendor's web site to view tomorrow's hourly prices. But it seems your computer (pc) has already done some browsing of its own. Since it's connected to your energy management system, your pc has already looked up the weather forecast and has logged on to the hotel's main computer to find out what rooms will be used.

The Internet doesn't suit companies

that are vulnerable to security or financial risk (em

like electric transmission providers.

THE RUSH IS ON TO SET OASIS IN MOTION.

The battle to control profit margin really boils down to a battle for the customer premises, where the serious money resides.The gas and electric industries in the United States control about $900 billion in assets (production, logistical, merchant). They employ these assets to serve about 150 million customers (counted separately for gas and electric), but they manage to offer only two rudimentary products (em molecules and electrons (em and at only two levels of service: firm (supposedly) and interruptible (obviously).

The United States Telephone Association has called for more voluntary interconnection agreements between telecom companies, claiming that the resulting competition will bring consumers more choices. USTA cited more than 50 signed agreements with companies that want to connect to the local network, and nearly 500 ongoing negotiations.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has approved the Gas Research Institute's request for a 20-percent cut in its 1996 research, development, and commercialization budget.

To prepare a report on stranded investment mandated by the Texas legislature, the Texas Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has asked electric utilities to file the required financial information using a new model.

The model consists of six scenarios that use a number of variables approved by the PUC to yield a broad estimate of excess cost over market (ECOM) (em a measure of potential stranded costs. Each utility will file 54 "snapshots" of its potential excess-cost factors based on various competitive market scenarios and market-price assumptions.

That was the question on the minds of representatives from local telephone exchange carriers (LECs) who huddled at the United States Telephone Association (USTA) National Issues Conference days before legislators passed sweeping telecommunications legislation that would affect everyone's future.

But the question went beyond what would become law when President Clinton fulfilled his promise to sign the bill.

Analysts may tout the coming "convergence" of communications technologies, but the real trend is "divergence."

No subject in recent memory has received as much media attention as the "Information Superhighway". But exactly what it is remains curiously unclear. The Internet? Wireless personal communications services (PCS)? Interactive fiber-optic cable to the home? The Infobahn is all of these and more.